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Its amazing to me when I look back and see where we used to be. Hacking and security have grown together arm in arm. People use to say hacking was easy for you guys in that past but now its getting harder. Well there is some truth to that but remembers in the past everything used to be dial up! Man, do you know what is to scan a network like that, ha ha? You would start your scan and then go out and get your food and wash your car and when you got back you hoped you had a few results! Like the old joke goes, you didn’t want to be like the unemployed doctor! For those of you that don’t know the punch line, it’s a guy with no patients! It wasn’t as easy as you might think!

As our bandwidth increased so did the tools and the ease. But so did the other defensive technology. It really seems to have grown together. Is it easier now to hack? Yes and No. Sure if you find someone with an old system. If you have any high bandwidth its too easy! On the other hand, its getting harder to breach servers if the admin will just take the time to implement the most basic stuff, its amazing how it can harden a system form 90% of the attackers out there. So far I would say the worst admins out there seem to be those in charge of universities. Sorry to say that but I am just being honest from my experience. I have yet to see a school I cant breach when I am asked to! Usually it’s the simplest stuff. I don’t mean to hurt any feelings here but that honestly has been my experience! Edu people please harden your networks!

Any way, its fascinating to me to watch the growth of bandwidth and how hacking evolves at the same pace.

Last edited by Kev on Sun Dec 17, 2006 7:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I also agree with most of what you said and I think I know the reason why the education networks are more open and less secure. If you have ever seen the pay they offer for IT jobs you would understand fully. Most .edu's have such small budgets for there networks that they end up getting people right out of school or completely incompetent staff. Now this may not be correct for every school so don't get upset but I have worked with over 12 Schools in the past and I have seen a lot of this first hand. Sad thing is the medical industry is also lacking on network security due to lack of funding. Anyway this is all just my option from what I have seen out there.

I think that what you find in most industries are overworked admins with little to no time to deal with crucial security issues. I have worked in places where they are global and have staff needing support at all hours in all timezones. It is nearly impossible to update 80+ servers, without causing downtime, which as we all no is inexcusable

I am just taking about critical security updates, I must admit that no we did not test the updates they were deployed as fast as possible to both *nix and windows boxes. Was I lazy absolutely not, just dealing with unfair expectations of no downtime. Yes there are lazy admins out there, but I think for the most part they are trying no to upset the apple cart, it doesn't make it right but...